1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a computer implemented method, data processing system, and computer program product for confirming statistics. More specifically, the present invention relates to obtaining secondary sources for data collected concerning business processes.
2. Description of the Related Art
Businesses large and small rely on computers, computer networks, and electrical sensors to gather, aggregate and further process metrics concerning business processes. A business process is a quantifiable recurring or potentially recurring event that can measure strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats, typically in real-time or near real-time. Strengths and weaknesses can be measured by statistics concerning, for example, sales of particular items on a website owned or managed by the business, among other key process metrics. Opportunities and threats can be trends observable from various key process metrics or business statistics measured by a business.
Business activity monitoring (BAM) is the collection and aggregation of business activities within an organization from their sources initially recorded in a computer system under the control (as far as the business tracking data is concerned) of the organization. Among the benefits of BAM systems is the ability to collect data, often in real-time, and analyze the data so that the data can be presented to a dashboard. A dashboard is a high-level summary of the business processes monitored. In many cases, the dashboard is provided to a business executive on a display or other device of the executive's choosing.
Information concerning a business may be corrupted at a number of points in a BAM infrastructure. A BAM infrastructure is the collection of sensors, processors, network equipment and other information technology resources that collect, aggregate, synthesize and communicate status of the business. The BAM infrastructure is under the control of the business organization. Like many aspects of business, error may be introduced to a system by many of causes. Among these causes is widespread disruption from natural disasters, degraded sensors, faulty human data entries, soft errors, software defects, maintenance outages, hardware breakdowns, and the like. Each such error is more likely to be placed in a BAM infrastructure when such an infrastructure grows to have many components.
Accordingly, a BAM system can produce erroneous results to a dashboard. This anomalous situation can either create a false sense of security in an executive, or create panic and needless concern when there are gaps in data reporting that is observable in the dashboard, despite actual business-as-usual operations.